sometimeshuman's comments

Why do so many prominent admirable people age so poorly ? When I think of Musk now I think "silly culture-war shit-kicker". Lately when he communicates I gain no insight and actually feel dumber. Most recently:

"Kids learn that George Washington was a slave owner and nothing else."[0] -- I don't know anything about this but it sounds like total bullshit.

"Soros hates humanity."

It's even dumber in context...

"reminds me of Magneto."

We have a surplus of silly/entertaining tweets these days but a shortage of intelligent insights. I want the old Musk back, the man who used to raise the bar on discourse. What a loss.

[0]recent interview with Bill Maher

Worse, it's high trust in certain contexts and low critical thinking overall. Here are comments recently told to me in personal conversation:

The U.S. doesn't produce oil any more.

The U.S. spends $1.232 trillion dollars a month on the war in the Ukraine.

The U.S. has open borders.

Californian politicians want to abolish the police.

The BLM movement killed thousands and thousands of people.

Southern California cities are already below sea level.

The New York Times is owned by Mexico.

There are no police in California and you can commit pedophilia without punishment.

5Million migrants from Honduras are marching towards our border.

The Governor of Virginia want to legalize infanticide.

The luxury tax applies to tampons: "The same rate as a yacht, you mean?", Yes.

The only thing kids learn about George Washington in schools is that he was a slave owner.

The last one was something not heard in conversation but said by Elon Musk in an interview with Bill Maher.

Whenever I hear someone say the above I usually respond "I don't know much about that story, but that sounds like total bullshit". What I don't understand is how people claim low trust in the media but believe anything a culture-war shit-kicker says on Twitter.

You are right, I saw what appeared to be a 10X lower value in Wired and posted my misunderstanding prematurely. Here's the the blog post that appeared on HN's top 30 from yesterday. But I still can't find a reference to a paper with the 13.8C number in either the BBC article or the blog post. It may be in my blindspot.*

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35747417

*Sorry HN (and BBC), I had surgery recently and am taking narcotics. I won't post for a while since I'm not sure my thinking is clear and I may be criticizing unfairly.

Related, days ago the BBC reported what I assumed was a typo that the ocean temperature has risen 13.8C the past ~30 years. After reading the article I tried to double check the source but couldn't easily find it.

Yesterday HN's top 30 had a similar story from some blog I had never heard of. Their source was the BBC and a paper that didn't show 13.8C. Now we have a typo(?) spreading like a virus.

The chart in this Wired article shows a ~1.38C difference which is alarmingly high. What troubles me is how many people, even HN'ers, just ran with a 13.8C number without question. Am I missing something ? Is there any scientific paper showing 13.8C, which would likely kill a significant portion of marine life ? I'll do a time-boxed (2 years) boycott of the BBC until proven otherwise.

I lived in a high and dry mountain area and dry-eye disease was making me miserable. It affected the quality of my life and sleep. I ended up spending about $1000 on 3 Venta "air-washers" and the relief they provided were worth every penny.

I have since moved to a low and humid city and my dry-eye went away a few weeks after moving here. I hope it never returns.

This video explains hypersonic weapons in the general sense. But the threat is from the newer advanced hypersonic weapons that are steerable at low altitudes. There is no "I know where it is going and can intercept" as the speaker claims since where it is going changes dynamically.

I hope I am the one who is misunderstanding the technology but every time I see someone talk with absolute certainty or with an appeal to authority they are often wrong some way.

In 1st grade it was an unspoken understanding that Latin kids are put in the slow class. It's understandable since most of us didn't speak English at home. But my teacher realized that I was advanced for my age so she put me in the back of the class with another classmate who didn't know any English. An hour or two a day we would sit in the back and I would read to her, translate words, and practice spelling. She seemed happy that someone was helping her and I felt great helping a classmate.

One day I mentioned this to my parents. They didn't understand/believe it at first. But the next time I mentioned it they understood and instead of feeling proud they were clearly upset. Then a few months later I wrote a poem that impressed the school teachers and at that point they moved me to the "fast" class and I never tutored again until college.

Why couldn't I have done both? Would I have learned more if I had been forever in the slow class but tutoring half of that time ? That seems better than where it we are headed -- where everyone is in the metaphorical slow class and the advanced kids likely become numb and disinterested.

Perhaps. But then we should not let anyone vote who has hit escape velocity. The person you described might be very well off at which point they are a single issue voter -- low tax rates.

Those guys took the App layout and button graphic without permission from GarageMax (formerly GarageMate/GDMate) and still use that unauthorized graphic.

I wouldn't trust anything they say.

link below is from 2011. Nexx released around 2017 [0]https://web.archive.org/web/20110619012628/http://btmate.com...

"Are you still doing Intermittent Fasting?" Yes.

"Are you still saying Intermittent Fasting?" No.

Out of respect to people who have the discipline to go 24hours or more without eating I can't bring myself to say I am "fasting" simply because I had a late breakfast and early dinner. "Time restricted eating" (TRE) is the phrase I personally use.

Adopting that phrase might free you from feeling like an imposter if that is partly the reason you are troubled by not adhering to it on weekends. Just do TRE weekdays if that is what your lifestyle will accommodate. It's what I do and I consider it a personal win.

"I thought bleach and alcohol were thought to not create pressure for resistance because of their nature."

Agreed, and I missed if this article stated otherwise. Also we have been adding chlorine (the active ingredient in bleach) to our water supply for over 100 years ago and that experiment hasn't produced resistant microbes AFAIK.

"that goes stale when you'd expect it". Super dumb question, but would fresh baked bread placed in the freezer last a few weeks ? I don't buy fresh baked out of concern most of it will get thrown away.

The most dangerous communicators are those who/that make assertion with a confidence that is not in proportion to their level of certainty.

A good start is to get rid of ChatGPT's "Sure!" opening word. It's giving me real garbage at times with the implied certainty.

The most dangerous communicators are those who/that make assertion with a confidence tone that is not in proportion to their knowledge level.

A good start would be to get rid of ChatGPT's "Sure!" opening word. It's giving me real garbage at times with the implied confidence of certainty.

The video reference the common ChatGPT "in the style of" prompt. Is there a list of what "styles" ChatGPT's model has been trained on ? Or is this information not disclosed since it would be an admission that ChatGPT has been trained on copyrighted lyrics, etc. by which is produces these derivative results ?

I wonder this too. I tried scraping iOS App reviews from Apple's server and I didn't get far before my IP was blocked.

While the photo might not be a good example, in the animal kingdom exposing your neck, like exposing your belly, in an overall non-assertive way would indicate submissiveness. It's in your interest to be submissive if you doubt you will win in combat. I'll leave the thought experiment to the reader as to whether females or males do better in combat and why this head tilt might be predominantly nature not nurture.

I often cited example is to write something in the style of "Dr. Suess". Doesn't this imply that Dr. Suess's books are in the training data set ? How can one find out what other books, screenplays, magazines, etc. are in the training data.

Sorry for the tangent but a surprising number the general public doesn't know the meaning of percent[1]. So even if a teacher is told those percentages many wouldn't know what to conclude.

[1] Me, giving young adults that worked for me a commission rate. Then asking if their commission rate is 15% and they sell $100 of goods what is their payment. Many failed to provide an answer.

In case you want to filter by country, run this admittedly ugly code, in the console. Change 'US' to your country of interest.

var jq = document.createElement('script'); jq.src = "https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.5.1/jquery.mi... document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(jq); setTimeout(function() { $('table').find('tr').each(function() { if ($(this).find('td').first().text() != 'US') {$(this).hide()}}); }, 1000);